312 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



I have been asked to make a statement in reference to my last year's crop 

 of White Russian oats. They ^ere raised on as light soil as the plains 

 produce. The land -was first broken in ISSO and planted to fodder corn, 

 followed by two crops of winter rye. Tlien it received a light dressing of 

 manure, two loads per acre, and was planted to potatoes, then seeded to clover 

 ■with spring wheat, then plowed up last year and put in to oats. I sowed 1^ 

 bushels and received 28 measured bushels, weighing 36 pounds to the bushel. 



Mr. Kose: In regard to plowing I will state my experience. My first 

 plowing was seven inches deep, a narrow furrow and return. Some one said 

 to me " That's a good deal too deep." We had plowed about one acre. So 

 we made the next acre about four inches deep. It was measured, and not 

 guessed at. Before I got through with it some one else said, " You are plowing 

 a good deal too deep, I would not plow over two inches and a half." Well,, 

 you know the old fable. So I fixed the wheel again and only plowed about 

 two inches and a half. That disgusted me, and I put it down again about 

 four inches and finished up pretty well satisfied that the first plowing was 

 better than all. The next year, however, I began to see the result of the 

 three depths of plowing. A good crop of our natural ferns and dwarf whortle- 

 berries, and everything that it had grown before it was plowed, came up 

 through the seven- inch plowing; less in the four-inch plowing and not any 

 of it came up in the two and a half-inch plowing; the seeds were thoroughly 

 rotted and the brakes were all killed. On second and third plowing I would 

 go deeper. Our soil is not 110 feet deep. It is only 6 to 11 inches deep. 



CATTLE RAISING. 



Mr. Head : I didn't prepare a paper on live stock for the reason that I 

 didn't feel equal to the task. I would say, however, that my little experience 

 in stock-raising in this country has been satisfactory to me. We commenced 

 with one cow and we have her yet and 69 more. 



Mr. Willits: How many years have you been on the plains? 



Mr. Head : It will be twelve years the eighth day of next July since we 

 got our first cow, and ran in debt for her. 



Mr. Rose: This subject is the key to the solution of the problem of the 

 plains, and if possible I think there should be time given for the discussion 

 of the subject, as Mr. Head has occupied so little time. It was for the pur- 

 pose of starting a stock farm that I came north. I brought up some twelve 

 or fifteen head of cattle. 



The coarse natural grasses here are splendid for every kind of stock except 

 horses. Horses don't seem to do well here. The cattle I brought here I fed 

 nothing but the marsh grass that I cut and they came out in good condition 

 in the spring. The people in the southern part of the State have got an idea 

 that the winters here are so long that cattle can't be raised with profit; but 

 my experience here is this: I had brought with me grain to feed, and I had 

 a good supply of blue Joint hay and I gave them a good chance through the 

 winter, and on the 13th of April, before the snow was half gone from the 

 ground, I let them out to the ground. There are two or three kinds of grass 

 here that remain green all winter, and as quick as they got a taste of those 

 grasses they would not come up one hundred rods to get their hay and meal. 

 I didn't put any bells upon them and they wandered off and were gone five 

 days before I could find them. I found them three or four miles from home 

 and they were in better condition then than when they left. From that time 



